Between turkey races, cow bingo and a giant horse and steer, the
Southern California Fair is celebrating its nearly 100-year-old
agricultural roots in a big way.

Gone are the days of booking household-name bands such as The
Beach Boys and The Bangles. This year local music and dance groups
will dominate the main stage along with karaoke and a nightly show
by the Doo-Wah Riders, a high-energy country group that regularly
plays at Disneyland.

With fair patrons' overall spending down in recent years, fair
officials have stopped angling for the bigger celebrity acts as a
way to control costs, Southern California Fair manager Vince
Agnifili said.

This has allowed the fair to keep entry fees the same as they've
been for the past six years: $8 for adults and $4 for children,
Agnifili said.

"You can see big name musical acts in the community all the time
now at the tribal casinos or other venues," Agnifili said. "People
need to know it's affordable to come to the fair. The fair's about
celebrating what's good about a community."

Youth participation continues to power several livestock and
other exhibits at the fair, which opens Saturday at 11 a.m. and
runs daily through Oct. 17.

Dozens of students from area high schools have designed and
installed a walk-through landscaping display -- a patchwork of
lawn, plant and fountain combinations -- that can be viewed in the
horticulture tent.

Other fair traditions include turkey races, a wild-eyed exercise
in which 16 heritage turkeys chase a food-filled truck to determine
which gobbler runs fastest.

Nancy Riegler, dyes her turkeys' feathers with red and blue food
coloring to mark which birds are on which team.

"They're all brand new and super fast and super stupid," said
Riegler, whose traveling turkey act has been featured on the TV
show "Dirty Jobs."

The turkey races are a throwback to a time when Riverside
County's fair morphed into the Hemet Utility Turkey Show from 1936
to 1942, according to a historical record of the Southern
California Fair.

Other old-fashioned standbys such as the Ferris wheel will vie
for fairgoers' attention next to rowdier events such as monster
truck shows, sprint car races and a demolition derby.

But this year, the glow of the Ferris wheel, will be more
intense and colorful than ever as it was recently revamped with
fluorescent LED (light-emitting diode) lights.

"They make the old lights look obsolete, that's for sure," said
Tony Renard, 50, who supervises assembly and operation of The Giant
Wheel that lifts passengers more than 100 feet into the sky.

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